Whatever it takes” seems to be trumped by politics now Since 2011 Mario Draghi had brought iron-clad consistency to the ECB: it would err on the side of caution, would go as far as possible to reduce fragmentation in the Euro area, and the stance would be driven solely by economic conditions. Political pressure and technical constraints would always be trumped by the necessity to do “whatever it takes” to bring inflation back to an unchanged target of “below but close to 2%”. We did not get this sense of consistency this week, and our reading is that political constraints appear to now be dominating both the stance ... (full story)